The Columbia Political Review is a student run non-partisan publication. The views represented here belong to their author and are not representative of the publication's political views or sympathies.

Following NATO’s intervention and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1970 referring the crimes in Libya to the ICC, Libya’s revolution has faced a tension surrounding the impending trial of former Qaddafi loyalists

After the Arab Spring, Middle Eastern countries that have undergone tumultuous revolutions are now under the scrutiny of the rest of the world ... But the many newly minted leaders are trying daily to make things better.

If anything, our track record in Libya is cause to never support rebel factions again. Overthrowing a tyrant like Qaddafi is something to be proud of, to be sure, but our work in Libya helped create a far larger mess.

Elections indicate a positive step in the transition away from authoritarianism and toward democracy, but they are not always a means of reassuring that a transitioning country is in optimum condition. Elections are a means, not an end, of the post-authoritarian transition process.

Offset against grey skies and the black uniform of an average Istanbulite bundled against the cold, the bright yellow and turquoise banners of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) bring a hint of the Arab Spring to Taksim Square.

While these divisions, as evidenced by the racial and xenophobic violence in Libya, are real and destructive, they are not eternal. Rather, they are the result of a particular historical narrative that has constructed Arabs and Africans as intrinsically different and eternally divided.

The problem with the firmly partisan prism of the media through which most of American politics is dissected is that we lose the many nuances of our political realities. Complexities become distorted and disfigured as they are forcefully shoved into the binary classifications of party politics. Perhaps the most extreme example is the way foreign policy has almost disappeared in today’s political consciousness, not in the least because the Obama administration’s policies defy easy political branding. However, despite the media’s predisposition to ignore what happens outside of Wall Street and Main Street this election season, President Obama’s first term has been rather eventful on the foreign policy front.

The Columbia Political Review is a student run non-partisan publication. The views represented here belong to their author and are not representative of the publication's political views or sympathies.